To: Journey North
From: Annikki Opettaja,
Utsojoki, Finland
Date: May 9, 1996
Spring is a little late this year. Ice hasn't broken up on the Teno River (the best salmon river in Europe) and there's still a lot of snow on the ground, at least 32 inches. The thermometer reads zero degrees and the sun is shining. The dark time is only a couple of hours. People go snowmobiling and skiing on the fells. Ptarmigan are changing color to camouflage themselves. Reindeer calves will be born soon.
ARRIVAL of MIGRATORY BIRDS IN UTSJOKI
Pine grosbeak.......... March 15
Snow bunting.......... March 31
Waxwing.......... April 6
Black-headed laughing gull.......... April 9
Dipper.......... April 14
Blackbird.......... April 25
Rough-legged buzzard.......... April 27
Whooper swan.......... April 27
Wagtail.......... May 3
Chaffinch.......... May 3
Bean goose.......... May 3
Annikki Opettaja
Utsojoki, Finland
(69.53 N, 27.00 E)
lukio@utsaame.pp.fi
Note the arrival of snow buntings! This is the same bird the Inupiat watch for in Point Hope, Alaska which signals the arrival of the first bowhead whales! (See below.) Also, according to caribou biologist Robert Mulders in Arviat (Eskimo Point), NWT, Canada, "Spring has arrived once we begin to see snow buntings. On April 13 the first snow buntings were spotted this spring."
Take out a circumpolar map and see if you can find Utsojoki, Point Hope and Arviat. Where do you think snow buntings from each place might spend the winter?
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To: Journey North
From: Sheila Gaguin,
Tikigaq School, Point Hope, Alaska
Date: April 18, 1995
My class and I have enjoyed reading about the ice-out and other signs of spring in communities around the country. Here in Point Hope, Alaska (68.21 degrees north, 166.44 degrees west) spring comes rather late. This morning our temperature was a chilly 20 degrees below zero F. BUT, we did have our first true sign of spring this week! On April 11, Hannah Teayoumaek, one of our 5th graders, spotted the first snow bunting (Plectrophenax nivalis) of the season!
Hundreds of species of birds migrate to the Arctic in the summer, but the snow buntings are always the first to return. It is said that the snow buntings signal the return of the bowhead whale to Arctic waters. This is important because Point Hope is an ancient Inupiat Eskimo village. The people of Point Hope (Tigara) have hunted the bowhead from seal skin boats each spring for at least a thousand years. Almost all of the whale--the muktuk (blubber), meat, bone, organs and baleen are used. Parts that are not usable are returned to the sea to honor the spirit of the whale, so that other whales in the future will give themselves to the hunters. In this way the whale and the Inupiat people have been bound together for centuries.
From Sheila Gaquin
Tikigaq School 5th grade class
Point Hope, Alaska
sgaquin@arctic.nsbsd.k12.ak.us
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